


sigh no more

by preromantics



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Future Fic, HP: EWE, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-21
Updated: 2011-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The manor is quiet, now.</i> Prompt: lyrics to Dustbowl Dance by Mumford & Sons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sigh no more

**Author's Note:**

> For a war-centric HP comment meme on LJ, 1/17/2011.

The manor is quiet, now. As Draco walks through, even five years out, he can still see the scrapes in the once-polished marble floors, the burn marks along the formal dining room walls that will never come out, little explosions of charred wood, unable to be touched by magic or hands. Erasable bits of history he feels connected to, feels burnt into the soft flesh that feels heavy, somehow, disfigured burns in his forearm, his own sort of repayment. 

The high end elegant poles of his dark bedframe have nail and teeth marks dug in, when it was too hard not to make a noise, too hard not to hold on and dig in until he felt, again.

Five years out and yet he takes the walk of the manor every year on the same day, the light that filters through diamond-paned windows grittier and grittier as time moves on. 

The lighting is different, the dark and heavy wood is different, the dust that clings to the corners in intricate patterns. No one wants to be inside, least of all Draco. Not for now or for good. Yet he comes back every year on the anniversary, a silent journey, pausing in each room and each hall at each filthy window to remember: things that happened, things he did, things that were done to him. 

("Choices," he used to see them as. He'd chosen to let it happen, to get to the point where there was no escape. "Foolish adolescent pride." 

Except -- except now he has someone beside him, and every time he says this, he gets a dark sort of grin in return. 

"I know a lot about foolish adolescent pride, too," says the weary grin's owner, and it takes the rest of the night, or maybe the barest fraction of a second, for Draco to relax again with hands on his hips, back, cheeks, fingers trailing down his arm.)

It's been five years of silent journey's; three anniversaries worth of having someone to come home to -- not here, not the manor, which isn't home at all (maybe it never was -- maybe it was always just a place full of expectations) -- and one year, this year, of having someone accompany him. 

Draco knows, he does, that it's maybe a bad idea, it's too much. The string mint size thread that once started their tenuous connection, both as broken in the aftermath as they were whole, well. It's twine now, maybe growing stronger, unicorn hair -- maybe. Draco can't, doesn't want to risk it, to risk opening up his silent remembering walks to the person once so apt to jump.

Except when he's asked, nearly silent and mouthed into the dip of his spine, Draco says yes. (It's hard not to agree to any utterance against sweat slick skin, but that doesn't matter now. Draco knows the skin of the person standing next to him, looking down over the long and cracked formal dining table, probably better than he knows his own. 

It's usually silent. It's the point of it all -- or it was. It was time for Draco to reflect, and Draco knows that this year he doesn't have to talk, doesn't have to share with words. Except he finds himself opening his mouth automatically, talking his way room to room, the fingers wrapped tight around his wrist the anchor he needs to remember,  _really_  remember this time. 

They finish in Draco's old room, the curtains thrown back wider than in any other room of the manor, as they were the day he left and didn't come back. The lighting is still dark, though, gloomy, little bits of sunlight catching on broken glass from a phial of pain-numbing potion he once refused to take, pressed into his hands by the only person who cared to give it to him. Years ago. 

Beside him, looking around the room, his companion is silent as he had been the entire walk through. Silent, but looking at him, mouth set into a sort of grim line but his eyes warm, bright, the brightest thing in the room. 

"Harry," Draco says, slowly, softly. His mouth is dry from talking so much, barely paying attention to what he was saying. 

"Thank you," Harry says, unexpected. "For letting me see." 

Dust shifts in little billowing, light-flecked clouds when Harry steps closer. "You come back every year?" he asks, blurred up close. 

Draco nods, unsure of how to take the question. Harry knows he does. Draco feels a little light -- not in the hollow way he usually does after his walk throughs, not in the mind-numbing way. He feels empty and light, something like warmth down his spine, Harry's ever-present fingers wrapped around his wrist the only true sense of pressure around him, like maybe having Harry with him this time made it different entirely. Like maybe all his words forced their way out of the pit on his stomach and the back of his mind and tumbled down into Harry's fingers so he could take all the weight away. 

(Draco almost, almost rolls his eyes at himself. Which is when he realizes this time is different. Almost like some soft of end, and when he looks up at Harry's face, his mouth open and poised to say something, Draco realizes it's not only the end of something, but it's the real beginning of everything. Everything he's narrowly been avoiding for five years, three spend tucked up in secret bedsheet folds with no sense of where his own legs ended and Harry's began.)

Harry gets half of a word out, or maybe just a hesitating sound, like he's trying to find the right words to fix everything for Draco, everything in the manor and the past -- something Draco knows, is almost overwhelmed by the fact, that Harry would automatically do for him. Make things better. Erase them and replace them with things Draco never thought he could have.

Draco, despite the grimy dust set into the roof of his mouth on every inhale, and despite the scene around them, grins, quick and wide, and his face probably looks stupidly ridiculous. 

Harry closes his mouth and raises an eyebrow, instead. 

"Don't you have some sort of very large, public, remembrance speech to give today?" Draco asks, shaking his wrist from Harry's fingers only to loop his own fingers over Harry's knuckles. 

With the way Harry's face twists, just a little, Draco knows he thinks Draco is avoiding, or covering up everything the morning walk through has meant, but he doesn't drop his (somewhat smaller, now) grin.

"And a gala," Draco continues, "right after? With all the cameras and people who will want to shake your hand and wonder why poor Potter doesn't have a date to his honoring gala for yet another year?"

Harry's face twists in a different direction, and he looks rather bemused, now. 

Maybe Draco deals with horrible truths rather badly, maybe he just realized (finally) that -- well -- "Harry," Draco says, softer this time. "I --"

Harry cuts him off with a shake of his head, "You're," he starts, but seems unable to find the right words, though he's called Draco a hundred things in the time between them. 

"Fortunately available for last-minute dates," Draco fills in. (He pictures the morning papers, the crowd gathered for Harry's speech, the people dancing around them all night, talking and wondering and all the while Draco, finally, will be able to not give a fuck at all.)

"You realize what will happen," Harry says, though he doesn't sound anything but pleased. If his bangs were still long enough to cover his eyes, Draco is sure he'd be ducking to hide a triumphant sort of grin.

Draco takes a look around the room, breathes in, but he still doesn't feel the same weight he used to. "What will happen," Draco says, "is that you'll be in a nicely tailored suit that will be completely outshone by mine, and we'll need to burn every copy of the Prophet that comes in the morning with both of our faces all over it. Waste of paper." Except his mouth is turning up again.

"Not a waste," Harry says, automatic. "Us," he expands, the corner of his mouth turning up. 

Draco's room always felt empty and hollow when he looked inside at it, the years he walked through alone. All the memories of playing with little broomstick figurines and dragons and charmed metal snakes on the wide hearth rug, of reading in his bed through the night, books from his father's study propped open on his knees -- all of those memories used to be echos, faded mumbles behind the stark reality of Draco's much worse memories. Except when he looks back around, Harry leading him out the door, now, Draco sees the good memories instead, and when they walk down the hall he thinks maybe he sees the floors gleaming with polish instead of dust and dark, unthinkable stains. 

There is a lot shared between them, different memories of the same war and shared memories of the days and months and years after, and now, the journey from his room to the front doors, to the lawn and out -- Draco can only see the iron gates behind them and the suspiciously blue sky above and tomorrow's Prophet headline in their future. 

Harry knocks their shoulders together as they walk, hard enough to send Draco skidding off the path for a second. 

"I hope you actually own a better tailored set of robes than the ones you wore to your gala last year," Draco says, falling in stride with Harry again. 

Harry shrugs, but the corner of his mouth turns up. 

"I'm not going to be all over the Prophet in the morning next to some slob with loose button-holes," he says, though his try for disdain doesn't really eclipse the equal turn up of his mouth. 

Draco still feels light, and yeah -- they'll talk about today later, about what it meant to have Harry walk through memories with him for an entire morning, the double marks of their boots left through the dust all through the house, only to be covered again in the year it would take before Draco would return. Maybe he won't return. 

He knocks Harry with his shoulder, though he doesn't manage to throw him off the path at all -- and Harry twists into his space in retaliation, hands coming up to cup his face, leaning forward and not laughing at all, kissing him on the edge of the property like he'd been waiting to the entire day.

Draco goes to say something light again, except it doesn't work, and he's grateful that Harry knows he tries, knows in the squeeze of his fingers that Harry understands, probably better than anyone. Understands today, understands Draco, them. 

Draco gets one last look at the manor when he takes a half-step turn to follow Harry back to Draco's flat, but when he closes his eyes he doesn't see the manor, or the burn marks in the wood, or inhuman eyes -- he just sees Harry's face, and the people who care about them now, and the past doesn't matter, not in comparison.


End file.
